look. HODL uses the term ‘heuristic’ a lot. so here’s one. music. fucking music. by some act of god, i had the brains to squeak by on a finance degree at an ‘elite’ institution but it was punk rock i identified with. not the green day you think. or fall out boy. or whatever tf ppl define as punk now. i was in basements running through crowds to scream lyrics while sweating alongside singers that wanted to change how the world ran. and some of these bands eventually caught the eye of industry bigwigs. i became one. you’ve heard of these bands. they now play stadiums. a crowd of purists who liked the first self made EP - or LP, or indie label demo, or whatever - won’t fill a stadium. something changes in the evolution of a band. the frontman for a street punk band says ‘the cure had a record called Pornography and it changed my life.’ and fans like me say ‘oh shit, i thought that was just me.’ so their next record has a twist that reflects an influence from The Cure. it attracts more fans. different fans. and this happens album after album. the ethos of that frontman does not change. nor does that of the band. i assure you. at heart, they are the same band of punk kids that didn’t sit right with the with a bigger audience, an evolved sound, and the moral compass that stood when they were 16 years old and kids like me were screaming ‘fuck authority’ by their side. don’t like the crowd? that’s on you, not the band. and certainly not btc. btc is that band.